VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Gap Up Following Analyst Upgrade

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) shares gapped up prior to trading on Friday after The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded the stock from a neutral rating to a buy rating. The stock had previously closed at $3.86, but opened at $4.04. The Goldman Sachs Group now has a $5.00 price target on the stock, up from their previous price target of $3.10. VNET Group shares last traded at $4.05, with a volume of 556,042 shares trading hands.

Other equities research analysts have also issued reports about the stock. HSBC upgraded shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $5.20 target price on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 9th. StockNews.com raised shares of VNET Group from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, August 21st. Hsbc Global Res raised shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 9th. Citigroup initiated coverage on shares of VNET Group in a research report on Wednesday, September 4th. They set a “buy” rating and a $4.00 price target for the company. Finally, UBS Group upped their price target on VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, five have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $4.78.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Inspire Investing LLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the third quarter valued at approximately $1,092,000. Millennium Management LLC lifted its stake in VNET Group by 89.1% in the 2nd quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 2,973,358 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $6,229,000 after buying an additional 1,400,683 shares in the last quarter. Blue Trust Inc. grew its holdings in VNET Group by 785.4% during the 3rd quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 42,074 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $172,000 after buying an additional 37,322 shares during the last quarter. Ballentine Partners LLC purchased a new position in VNET Group during the second quarter worth $36,000. Finally, Creative Planning raised its holdings in shares of VNET Group by 124.1% in the third quarter. Creative Planning now owns 117,139 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $478,000 after acquiring an additional 64,866 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 72.83% of the company’s stock.

VNET Group Price Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.83. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $3.68 and a 200-day moving average price of $2.71. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.03 billion, a PE ratio of -1.74 and a beta of -0.27.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, August 27th. The information technology services provider reported $0.06 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.01 by $0.05. VNET Group had a negative net margin of 28.54% and a negative return on equity of 5.68%. The firm had revenue of $274.35 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $266.56 million. Sell-side analysts forecast that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.01 EPS for the current year.

About VNET Group

VNET Group, Inc, an investment holding company, provides hosting and related services in China. It offers managed hosting services consisting of managed retail services, such as colocation services that dedicate data center space to house customers' servers and networking equipment, as well as allow customers to lease partial or entire cabinets for their servers; interconnectivity services that allow customers to connect their servers; value-added services, including hybrid IT, bare metal, firewall, server load balancing, data backup and recovery, data center management, server management, and backup server services; cloud services that allow customers to run applications over the internet using IT infrastructure; and VPN Services that extend customers' private networks by setting up connections through the public internet.